Prof. Albert Einstein, whose new five-page manuscript on the “New Field Theory” establishing the relation between electricity and gravitation has aroused world-wide interest and been hailed as opening a new vista for the scientific understanding of the universe, will attain his fiftieth birthday on March 14. He was born in Ulm, Germany, March 14, 1879.
In 1905 Prof. Einstein presented to the scientific world a number of publications in the “Annalen der Physik,” one of them, “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” being the first of a series of papers on the subject of relativity. In the same year he received his doctorate for a thesis entitled “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.”
In 1909 he was appointed extraordinary professor at Zurich and in 1911 ordinary professor at Prague. He returned to Zurich as full professor in the following year and in 1914 accepted a call to Berlin to become a member of the Berlin Academy and a professor at the University. In 1921 he received the Nobel prize.
Einstein’s theories regarding time, space, and gravitation, supported as they are by convincing experiments, are profoundly influencing philosophic and, perhaps, religious thought. Their conception is of a cosmos decidedly at variance with anything yet conceived by any school of philosophy. Einstein has realized various discoveries in physics and mathematics to build up a coordinated system showing connecting links where heretofore none were perceived.
When the Royal Astronomical Society conferred on Einstein in 1926 its gold medal, the blue ribbon of the astronomical world, in recognition of his work on the Theory of Relativity and Gravitation, the President, Professor Jeans, said that Einstein’s theory had transformed the world from a drama into a picture. It was possible that in the future scientists would again transform it into a drama, but a drama where the actors will play ex tempore as they go on. Einstein was one of the outstanding figures of modern science and would remain for posterity one of the most outstanding figures in human thought, he declared.
Prof. Einstein, in acknowledging the receipt of the medal, wrote: “He who discovers a line of thought which permits us to penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature is greatly privileged. He who in addition is encouraged by the recognition, sympathy and help of the best minds of his time, experiences more happiness than anyone can realize. In this spirit I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the great honor of which you have found me worthy.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
